Dr. Desai on MRI Imaging for Bone Metastases in CRPC

Arpita Desai, MD, medical oncologist, University of California, San Francisco Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the rationale for evaluating the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for bone metastases in men with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).

Bone metastases are very common in prostate cancer in general, and specifically in CRPC, Desai says. The current imaging modalities that are used with CT scans and bone scans are not able to quantify responses in bony lesions. In fact, the RECIST criteria considers this “non-evaluable.” This was the basis for a phase II study presented at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, which utilized functional MRI metrics, specifically Ktrans, to measure vascular permeability and ADC, which detects tumor cellularity to identify responses in bony lesions.

Researchers hypothesized that there would be a decrease in cellularity in the tumor tissue, and there was a 35% decrease in Ktrans at 2 weeks, Desai says.

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